"What is contemplative prayer in relation to action? Simply this. He (sic) who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without this deepening of his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He or she will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas."
Thomas Merton, The Climate of Monastic Prayer
